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Habitia Help

Assigning a vendor

A vendor in Habitia is a contractor, repair company, cleaner, or other service provider you hire to do work on your properties. You can keep them as a contact-list entry, or invite them to a portal account where they can see and update their own work orders.

Open Vendors in the left sidebar.

1. Add a vendor

Click Add vendor. Fill in the form:

  • Company name (required) — what you’ll search for in dropdowns.
  • Contact name — the person you usually talk to.
  • Email — needed if you want to invite them to the portal later.
  • Phone — for quick contact.
  • Default hourly rate ($) — used as the default on work orders you assign to them.
  • License number — the contractor’s license, where applicable.
  • Insurance expiration — Habitia surfaces an alert when this is within 60 days.
  • Notes — anything internal (preferred hours, who they prefer to work with, etc.).
  • Mark as preferred vendor — adds a star icon next to their name in dropdowns. Use it for the contractors you trust most.

Click Save vendor. They appear in your vendor list.

2. Assign a vendor to a work order

There are two paths:

From the work order itself:

  1. Open the work order.
  2. Pick the vendor from the Assign vendor dropdown.
  3. Save.

From the vendor list: click into a vendor to see their work history and dispatch a new work order from their detail page (coming soon).

Tip: Set the work order to Scheduled when you assign a vendor — that signals “vendor knows about this, date is set.” Leave it Open if the vendor hasn’t confirmed yet.

3. (Optional) Invite the vendor to a portal account

Trusted vendors can have their own login. They see only their assigned work orders, can post status updates, and can mark jobs complete with notes — saving you the back-and-forth.

  1. From the vendor list, click the person-with-plus icon on their row.
  2. Habitia generates a one-time invitation link valid for a fixed window.
  3. Email or text the link to the vendor. They register on the portal and from then on can sign in via app.thehabitia.app.

The vendor list shows a Portal badge once they’ve registered.

Note: A vendor with portal access still doesn’t see your ledger, leases, or tenant info. They only see the work orders you assign to them.

4. Insurance expiration alerts

If you fill in Insurance expiration on a vendor, Habitia raises a Smart Alert (Smart alerts overview) when their insurance is within 60 days of expiring. Don’t dispatch a vendor with expired insurance to a property — your own liability is exposed.

Editing or removing a vendor

  • Pencil icon on the vendor row → edit their info.
  • Trash icon → remove the vendor. Their historical work orders stay attached to the vendor record (still attributed in reports), they just won’t show in future dropdowns.

What’s next